Preparing to Teach Order of Operations and Whole Numbers

The first math unit I teach is Order of Operations and Whole Numbers. I try to be strategic as I jump into any unit, so the first thing I do is pre-assess my students on all of the standards I’m about to teach.

*Our units are grouped by the state of GA and are from the Georgia Standards of Excellence. Unit 1 contains the following standards: 5.OA.1, 5.OA.2, 5.NBT.1, 5.NBT.2, 5.NBT.5, 5.NBT.6

Pre-assessments are a great way to find out what your students already know. It helps with:

determining what skills each student or the class has already mastered

helping to form small groups based on data

determining timelines and mapping out how long you may need to teach each skill

differentiating instruction based on the pre-assessment data

What Does My Pre-test Look Like?

multiple choice – I use a multiple choice pre-test in order to easily interpret data so I don’t spend weeks having to grade it. I can plan immediately.

paperless – A few years ago I took all of my math assessments and put them into Google Forms. This has saved me TONS of time with grading

20 questions – this is a pretty reasonable number of questions

standards included – I include the standard with each problem. I do this because when you get the data in Google Forms, it will pop up and show you exactly which standards you need to focus on.

***I only use multiple choice on my unit tests (pre and post). On quizzes, quick checks, and classwork, the questions are open-ended.***Students still work out their problems on paper, but they’re now able to get used to online assessments (our end-of-year state assessment is online) and I’m able to get the data instantly.

Once my students have completed the pre-test, I will take the time to go through the data and responses in order to plan my unit.

Click here to find out what the data can look like and how I use it for planning.

Click here to see all of my paperless math assessments for grades 3-5.